The commissary on the Edmonds' property is the plantation office, where the landlord keeps his records, and the company store, where his tenant farmers buy most of their supplies on credit, against his share of their crop. When Lucas enters the commissary, the narrative calls attention to the "tinned food and tobacco and patent medicines" on the its shelves and the "trace chains and collars and hames" that hang from hooks, and the "roll-top desk beside the front window" where Edmonds sits (226). When Lucas re-enters it later in the story, to these same details is added the "smell of molasses and cheese and leather and kerosene" (236). Curiously, in this story the commissary is the only building that the narrative ever enters.